


If You'd Just Ask

by malsseong



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 08:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malsseong/pseuds/malsseong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna's sick of Audrey making assumptions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You'd Just Ask

She’s not sure how it happened, this ‘thing’ that’s developed between them since Laura died. She’s not even sure what it is.

They’re not girlfriends; they have sex – really good sex, and a lot of it – and occasionally their kisses will turn more intimate than passionate without either of them knowing how it happened. But they don’t go on dates, and they don’t hold hands, and they certainly don’t whisper sweet nothings in one another’s ears.

And they’re not friends; they were never actively hostile towards one another, and they still don’t acknowledge one another in the hallways – Donna smiled at Audrey exactly once and, after being completely ignored, never dared to try again. But they’ve taken to doing their homework together most afternoons, sprawled out on Audrey’s bed, with their thighs pressed against one another’s, or their shoulders brushing. But their time together is filled with frigid silences that always end in sex, because they don’t know how else to interact with one another.

Donna doesn’t mind, really. She doesn’t mind that what they have isn’t really a relationship, because what they do have – what they do when they’re together – is enough to satisfy her. At least it is most days. But she’s always liked to compartmentalise her life, and she’d like to know just which of the little boxes in her mind she’s supposed to be using to store all things Audrey Horne. And she just can’t help but think about it as she listens to the sound of Audrey breathing behind her, and focuses her gaze on her biology textbook – splayed open on the floor, after having been unceremoniously kicked off the bed an hour before – in order to keep her eyes from wondering over to the expanse of naked skin on the bed beside her that Audrey is never self-conscious enough to cover up.

The mattress shifts beside her, then there’s a crackle of cellophane, the spark of a lighter and the smell of cigarette smoke, before Audrey’s hand appears over her shoulder, offering her the lit cigarette. She takes it, but Audrey doesn’t retract her arm, leaves it draped over the other woman’s ribs, and even shifts forward slightly to press her body against Donna’s. And now Donna’s having a hard time breathing, acutely aware of the way Audrey’s nipples are pressing against her shoulder blades, so she just lays there, staring at the cherry of the cigarette, watching it slowly burn down.

“Are you actually gonna smoke that?” Audrey asks, chuckling into the back of Donna’s neck.

A guttural sort of hum is the only response Donna manages to come up with, so Audrey chuckles again, and reaches over to take the cigarette from between her fingers. She takes one puff, exhaling it into the air above them, then leans further over Donna to butt it out in the ashtray on the bedside table, before relaxing back into her position as the big spoon. She shifts closer still, and interlaces her fingers with Donna’s before pressing a kiss to the back of her neck.

Donna’s become frustratingly familiar with this routine – Audrey will do something sweet, then realise what she’s doing and quickly pull away, then spend the rest of the day being gruff and distant. She holds her breath, waiting for Audrey to either pull away and return to her own side of the bed, or make some move to indicate that she’s ready for round two.

By the time her lungs are beginning to burn with the need for air, Audrey still hasn’t pulled away, and Donna thinks she might even be nuzzling into the skin of her neck.

She releases her breath in a long puff, and clears her throat as subtly as she can.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice cracking slightly.

“Snuggling,” Audrey answers, voice laced with a hint of that arrogant tone Donna’s come to hate which suggests that the answer should be obvious.

“Oh, snuggling.”

Audrey either misses the note of anger in her voice, or she chooses to ignore it, pressing another kiss to Donna’s neck, then sighing contentedly as she allows herself to relax into the mattress.

Before Audrey really knows what’s going on, Donna has sat up, with the sheet clutched around her chest, and is half way across the room, bending down to retrieve her jeans from the floor.

Audrey spends a few moments watching in confusion as Donna darts around the room, angrily snatching up her belongings.

“What’s wrong?” she finally asks, after Donna has turned her back to the bed, and half dropped the sheet in order to put her jeans on while exposing as little of herself to Audrey as possible – as if Audrey hasn’t just spent the last hour memorising every inch of that skin with her hands and her lips.

Donna’s back stiffens, and she slowly turns around, abandoning her attempts at modesty and dropping the sheet to the floor.

“Since when do we snuggle?” Donna’s voice is filled with anger and the tightness that comes before tears.

Audrey lifts one shoulder in a shrug, her bravado and confidence slipping away, but Donna’s looking at her as though she expects a proper explanation.

“I just thought–” she begins, but Donna cuts her off.

“You just thought,” Donna says, voice shrill before dropping to a pained whisper. “You just thought.”

She turns around again, makes a jerking motion Audrey thinks might be to brush away a tear, yanks on her sweater without bothering with her shirt, then scoops up her textbooks from the ground and tries to shove them into her backpack.

“Donna.” She keeps her voice low, as if talking to a wild animal.

Donna gives up on trying to pack up her things, and marches out of the room with her backpack slung over her shoulder, her textbooks cradled in one arm and her shoes dangling from the fingers of her other hand.

Audrey flops backwards on the bed, skin crawling with an unfamiliar sensation. After hours of over analysis, laying in cold, rumpled sheets that smell of Donna and sex, she’ll come to recognise this sensation as guilt.

***

She calls the Hayward house once over the weekend, and is so flustered by the interrogation she receives from Donna’s sister – who claims to know all of Donna’s friends, and is too suspicious, and asks too many questions – that she doesn’t try to call again, resigning herself to waiting until Monday before she can talk to the other woman.

***

By Monday morning, Audrey is feeling distinctly sleep-deprived, and the annoying itch of guilt has grown to also include a deep sense of loss and loneliness.

So when she spots Donna leaning against her locker, talking to someone Audrey doesn’t recognise and doesn’t care about, she thinks it’s not that much of an overreaction that her heart speeds up and so does her walking pace.

But then Donna glances up and glares at her, expression full of as much anger as she can manage without drawing suspicion, before taking her friend by the elbow and leading them out of the hallway, and away from Audrey.

Audrey’s heart drops into her stomach, and she stops dead in her tracks. She takes a moment to catch her breath, then tries to remember how she used to act before there was someone in her life who was capable of making her feel this small. She pulls her face into what she hopes is a look of cocky indifference, and heads to her own locker, trying to come up with a plan to get Donna alone long enough to figure out what the hell happened on Friday night.

***

As far as plans go, Audrey would be willing to admit that this wasn’t exactly a great one. But she’d spent all day trying to get Donna alone, and failed every time.

So if following Donna halfway home, then forcibly dragging her behind a bush is the only way to get the other woman alone, Audrey’s willing to try it. And it works. Even if Audrey does end up with a handprint-shaped welt on the side of her face and half-moon nail indentations in her arm.

And as much as being beaten up by the other woman was not her plan, the look of guilt that flashes across Donna’s face fills her with hope and instantly eases the pain in her cheek, even if Donna is still fuming silently in front of her.

“Kidnapping you was my last resort, I swear.” She’s embarrassed by the lack of confidence in her voice, and allows her eyes to drop down to the grass between them.

Donna stays quiet, arms crossed over her chest, one hip cocked out to the side.

“I–” she begins, then stops, allowing herself time to gather her thoughts. “I’m sorry.”

Donna is still looking at her in silence, arms still crossed, hip still cocked.

“Look, this isn’t easy for me,” she says. And suddenly, Donna’s silence is infuriating. “God damn it, Donna, I thought you’d like snuggling. I won’t do it again.”

Donna scoffs loudly.

“Okay, fine,” Audrey says, throwing her hands up in a fit of dramatics, and turning to leave. “I’ve had enough.”

Before she can get too far, Donna’s grabbed her arm, and yanked her backwards.

“This isn’t just about you,” Donna says, voice too loud, standing too close, using her small height advantage to back Audrey up against the hedge. “ _You_ decided we should find out who killed Laura. _You_ decided we should start hanging out after school. _You_ thought it’d be best if we didn’t let anyone know we were spending time together. _You_ thought _I’d_ like to snuggle. If you’d just ask me what _I_ want, for once, you’d know how I feel about fucking snuggling.”

Audrey’s stunned into silence for a few moments, while Donna seems to be struggling to catch her breath.

“Okay,” Audrey says, dragging the word out, cautious of how Donna might react. “How do you feel about snuggling?”

Donna lets out a shrill laugh that sounds as though it was painful.

“Well,” she says, taking a step away from the other woman, pulling some of her defences up, “that depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On who I’m snuggling with,” she replies. She tries to inject some steel into her voice, suddenly feeling unsure of how Audrey will react.

Audrey opens her mouth to respond, but nothing seems to come out, so Donna continues.

“Y’see,” she says, taking another step back, and crossing her arms over her chest, “snuggling with someone I care about – someone who cares about me – a girlfriend, for example. That’s one thing. But snuggling with someone who won’t even acknowledge me in the hallway, that’s something else entirely.”

Audrey stands with her mouth agape in stunned silence for a few moments before she manages to snap herself out of it.

“So,” she drags the word out, “snuggling with me was…?”

“It was one thing,” she says, the corner of her mouth twitching up slightly.

“Y-y-y-you–” She swallows loudly, trying to get her raging heartbeat under control. “You care about me?”

Donna’s smile is devious as she nods. “And you care about me,” she says slowly, as though she’s explaining the situation to a particularly dull child.

“And you,” Audrey begins, her mind still catching up to the situation, “you want to be my girlfriend?”

“Uh-huh,” Donna says, a hint of seductiveness seeping into her tone. “And if you’d ever bothered to ask me how I felt, you would’ve known that weeks ago.”

“Oh,” is all Audrey manages to say.

Donna backs Audrey up against the hedge behind her, and presses their bodies together, then their lips.

They’re broken apart by the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk, a group of kids on their way home from soccer practice.

“You know,” Audrey says, “if you wanna head over to my place, we could try out this whole snuggling with someone you care about thing.”

Donna can’t help but laugh at the overeager expression on Audrey’s face. Before she has a chance to say anything in response, Audrey has grabbed her hand and is leading her out from behind the hedge.

As they walk down the street, hand-in-hand, fingers entwined, Donna thinks that perhaps, just this once, she doesn’t really mind if Audrey assumes she knows what the other woman is thinking. But just this once.


End file.
